Blueberry Buttercream Macarons

As a food photographer, I am constantly filling up hard drives with photos. Most of them sorta just disappear into the deep, dark folders of my computer to never again be seen. The select few get edited and used for blog posts, client advertising, some magazine articles. Every so often, I’ll be browsing around for Instagram pictures to post to find a folder full of pictures from a recipe that I fully intended to post, but completely forgot about. It happens way more often than I’d like, but is a bit of a nice surprise. — “Hey! Look. I can post that and actually have a couple hours for brunch this weekend!”

These macarons were a nice treasure chest surprise that I found this past week. I made them for some friend’s wedding shower a few months ago. I think I actually made hundreds of macarons that week. Some for a blogger party (Yes. That’s a thing.), these for a wedding shower, and the Cookies and Cream Macarons that actually made it to their debut.

My Macarons 101: A Beginner’s Guide post is one of the top 3 most visited posts on the blog (in good company with the Mirror Glazed Cake Tutorial). I can remember when macarons totally blew up and were the it thing to try to learn to make. Lots of people tried, some succeeded, many cried. It’s a daunting task without the right set of instructions, but I’m pretty proud of our track record. Browse through the Macarons 101 comments a bit and you’ll see that most of the readers that have given it their best go have had great results. A few angry emails and profanity-ladened comments cursing my name, but that’s part of the fun in blogging. One day I’ll put out a book with all of the hate mail over macarons that I’ve received….

All-in-all, macarons aren’t that tough to master. Don’t believe all of the hype about needing to pray three times over the almond flour, or sprinkle the shells with holy water. It’s all in the technique and proper folding. The way that I look at it is that you really have to just enjoy the process of baking before you decide to jump into the mac attack. Sure. You may break a couple flower vases, throw a bag of flour at your children, or catch your oven on fire (I can personally attest to the last one. Been there. Spent the weekend cleaning.). If you go into it with a desire to learn how to become a better baker, you’ll be just fine.

These macarons are chic and fancy looking, but really some of the most simple to make. Great starter recipe before trying to infuse flavors into the shells AND the filling. The shells are left to the traditional almond base, with the addition of a bit of coloring to get the dark finish. Filled with blueberry buttercream (aammmmmazing, y’all) made from flavor-punching freeze-dried blueberries, and that’s it! The blueberry flavor is a match made in heaven for the almond exterior.

Yes! You can use fresh fruit, but you will be best suited I think if you cook fresh berries down with some of the sugar and a bit of lemon juice before whipping it into the buttercream. That way you will reduce the liquid a bit. Too much water can ruin the balance of fat.

I had my first macaron last week in Las Vegas….Where have you been my darlings?! I’m ready to take the plunge and try my hand at making them. Your blog is fantastic. I’m using your “Basic” recipe and raspberry buttercream. Fingers crossed…

I love it! Sometimes I think I post too many of them and that macarons are soon 2015, but they are so much fun to play with for me. More to come!

OH — You can actually use any other nut flour. The only issue is that sometimes flours can’t be swapped 1:1. I’ve had good luck with grinding hazelnuts. Coconut flour is possible, but you usually only use 1/4 cup coconut flour in place of 1 cup almond, so I’m not sure what you may have to adjust elsewhere in the recipes to get that balanced. You can really use any nut flour, but not regular flour. Gluten is an enemy in macarons and simply won’t work.

Is there a certain one you would like to see a recipe for? I could certainly work on it.

Phillip-
Hi there. Thanks for sharing your food ventures – great stuff. I actually have two questions for you…

1 – you dropped the amount of sugar in this batch (as compared to your 101). any particular reason? I tend to find the amount of sugar and how fine I blend it directly relates to the “stick” I get to the baking sheet.
2 – what are you shooting with? Like a 22MM prime?

Good catch! The 101 post had an error. I’ll get that fixed.
I shoot with some different setups, but I believe these were probably taken with a 100mm prime macro lens. I hope to get some more detailed photography posts up in the near future.